1. Technical Field
The invention is directed to bandwidth extension and, more particularly, to providing an acoustic signal with extended bandwidth.
2. Related Art
Acoustic signals may be transmitted through analog or digital signal paths. A drawback of these signal paths is that they may restrict the bandwidth of the acoustic signals they carry. Because of this restricted bandwidth, the transmitted acoustic signals may differ from the original acoustic signals. When a transmission path restricts the bandwidth of speech signals, the quality and comprehensibility of these signals may suffer.
Some systems attempt to reduce these negative effects by applying bandwidth extension techniques. These systems receive a bandwidth restricted signal and attempt to reconstruct the missing frequency components of the received signal. The missing frequency components are re-synthesized blockwise. The system combines subsequent overlapping blocks to create the spectrally extended output signal. These systems may produce a noticeable block offset. This offset may cause significant artifacts to occur in the resulting signal. Furthermore, due to the use of block processing, these systems may introduce a delay into the signal path. Therefore, a need exists for an improved system for providing an acoustic signal with extended bandwidth.